I Know that You Don't Feel for Me

January 29, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is unrequited love.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A poem about unrequited love between friends:

I know that you don't feel for me

The way I feel for you.

We're good friends, I value that,

There's nothing you need do.

But as a friend I need to tell you

What is in my heart.

An unsaid truth is like a wall,

Keeping us apart.

My love for you will go nowhere,

Will just remain with me.

I'll hold it in my quiet arms

And feel it constantly,

And just enjoy it, as I now

Enjoy your company.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/iknowt.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Unrequited Love

1/27: You Don’t Love Me, but Ah! Do I Love You

1/28: I Want You, but I Don’t Want You to Know

1/29: I Know that You Don’t Feel for Me

I Want You, but I Don't Want You to Know

January 28, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is unrequited love.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A poem about shyness in love:

I want you, but I don't want you to know.

I fear the loss more than I trust the gain.

You are my love. I will not let you go.

Nor do I have the courage to bestow

My love on you, that you might see me plain.

I want you, but I don't want you to know.

I fear your presence like an undertow

That drags me out unready, trite, inane.

You are my love. I will not let you go.

And yet when you are near I feel your glow

Like sunlight dancing through my windowpane.

I want you, but I don't want you to know.

Empty but for you, I cannot show

You anything of interest I contain.

You are my love. I will not let you go.

I am a box within a box, safe so.

Sealed from self, I hide from your disdain.

I want you, but I don't want you to know.

You are my love. I will not let you go.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/iwan10.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Unrequited Love

1/27: You Don’t Love Me, but Ah! Do I Love You

1/28: I Want You, but I Don’t Want You to Know

You Don't Love Me, but Ah! Do I Love You

January 27, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is unrequited love.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A poem expressing the jealousy a spurned lover might feel:

You don't love me, but ah! do I love you!

It kills me that right now you have another!

Each day I watch the antics of you two

Happy hopping birds and say, why bother?

But I am chained to you as fish to sea,

Or as the moon to Earth, or Earth to sun.

The thought of letting go so tortures me

That I would rather let my anguish run.

I know that if I wait you will be mine.

Such love as this must sweep all walls away!

I am your natural light, and I will shine

Till due rotation turns your night to day.

Until then, this sorrow will remain:

My hope of joy must be my source of pain.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/youdon.html. For more poems about love, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lovepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Unrequited Love

1/27: You Don’t Love Me, but Ah! Do I Love You

The Smartest Way Is Always the Easy Way

January 26, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Nationality and Race/Lunar New Year in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, which this year is celebrated on January 20^th, and the Lunar, or Chinese New Year, which this year is celebrated on January 25^th.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A Lunar New Year poem for the Year of the White Metal Rat, from the rat’s point of view:

The smartest way is always the easy way.

Hard ways are for pigs or dogs or sheep.

Even fools can take what’s given away,

Yet it takes brains to take what fools would keep.

Earnings are no substitute for winnings,

As life, like rats’ teeth, pierces more than grinds.

Reserve your ruses for the final innings;

One sees the landscape better from behind.

Forget the common lie that labor pays.

Tricks pay by the truckload, not the hour.

Have up your sleeve a clever scheme that plays

Each bright-eyed bush according to its flower.

Remember: This is life, not some ideal

A pumpkin head would like to think is real.

Tiny folk must use their wits for power.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/thesma.html. For more Lunar New Year poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chinesenewyearpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday/Lunar New Year

1/20: Maybe Dreams Cannot Come True, but They

1/21: Might Not Racism Cut Both Ways

1/22: Maybe This Was Harder than I Thought

1/23: Love Is Far More Various than Race

1/24: Let Your Birth Sign Lie upon Your Chest

1/25: Lest You Leave Your Longings in the Sunshine

1/26: The Smartest Way Is Always the Easy Way

Lest You Leave Your Longings in the Sunshine

January 25, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Nationality and Race/Lunar New Year in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, which this year is celebrated on January 20^th, and the Lunar, or Chinese New Year, which this year is celebrated on January 25^th.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A Lunar New Year poem about the value of observing ancient holidays:

Lest you leave your longings in the sunshine

Unprotected from night's bitter shade,

Now you may take them on the lunar wind,

Alive to phantoms vivid as your face

Reveling in front of Reason's door.

Nor could your own inventions offer more,

Even those transfigured from your race,

Which, privatized, seem downsized, somehow thinned.

Yet here is all the wealth the past has made,

Each relic well preserved in ancient brine,

A treasure-trove of comedy and grace

Resting where your faith would else be blind.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/lest.html. For more poems about , go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/poems.html .

This week’s theme: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday/Lunar New Year

1/20: Maybe Dreams Cannot Come True, but They

1/21: Might Not Racism Cut Both Ways

1/22: Maybe This Was Harder than I Thought

1/23: Love Is Far More Various than Race

1/24: Let Your Birth Sign Lie upon Your Chest

1/25: Lest You Leave Your Longings in the Sunshine

Let Your Birth Sign Lie upon Your Chest

January 24, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Nationality and Race/Lunar New Year in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, which this year is celebrated on January 20^th, and the Lunar, or Chinese New Year, which this year is celebrated on January 25^th.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A Lunar New Year poem about the relationship between reason and religion:

Let your birth sign lie upon your chest,

Unity of character and fate

Now played out in fantasy and flesh,

A tableau to which readers may relate,

Reason and religion on a date.

Nor does this mean your reason has regressed,

Even if seduced by such a guest.

What faith might say is often reason dressed,

Yielding metaphors that illustrate

Exactly what no logic could suggest,

A time-encrusted truth by beauty blessed,

Retaining wisdom in its gnomic state.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/letyo2.html. For more Lunar New Year poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chinesenewyearpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday/Lunar New Year

1/20: Maybe Dreams Cannot Come True, but They

1/21: Might Not Racism Cut Both Ways

1/22: Maybe This Was Harder than I Thought

1/23: Love Is Far More Various than Race

1/24: Let Your Birth Sign Lie upon Your Chest

Love Is Far More Various than Race

January 23, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Nationality and Race/Lunar New Year in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, which this year is celebrated on January 20^th, and the Lunar, or Chinese New Year, which this year is celebrated on January 25^th.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A poem about love and race:

Love is far more various than race.

It goes much deeper than a person's skin.

It reaches to the heart, which is the same

In all the human race. It is the name

Of a hundred thousand feelings held within,

Yearning to be consumed in an embrace.

How does one particular embrace

Become more intimate than one's own name?

How of all the humans in this race

Do we find the one whose spirit is the same?

Of course we love to touch our lover's skin,

But what love touches is the soul within.

In marriage we must build one home within

Two hearts, one world in an embrace.

What matters is the will and not the race,

The choice to love what lies beneath the skin.

In every love the choice is just the same;

Without it, love is nothing but a name.

How do we make love more than just a name?

How do we not tire of the skin

We touch every day? In the race

To succeed, how do we keep the embrace

From smothering the passion still within?

How do we make our days not all the same?

Love is the decision to embrace

One body, one soul, one universe, one name.

To give up all we are and have within

And share the world beneath another's skin.

Once we do, the world is not the same:

The love two share enriches the whole race.

This is how love intersects with race:

Humanity is held in your embrace.

Your love will never leave the world the same:

When it looks for peace, it calls your name.

Do not fear the politics of skin:

Choose love each day, and joy will reign within.

Within your love is all you need embrace.

Love caresses skin and values race.

Two in name, you are in love the same.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/race.html. For more poems about nationality and race, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/racepoems.html .

This week’s theme: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday/Lunar New Year

1/20: Maybe Dreams Cannot Come True, but They

1/21: Might Not Racism Cut Both Ways

1/22: Maybe This Was Harder than I Thought

1/23: Love Is Far More Various than Race